For the past few days, since getting the newest update to Adobe Flash Player I've had a very annoying problem with watching youtube videos. The sound quality while watching videos is just terrible. Depending on if it's a song with a lot of bass, singing, or a video with just commentary, the distortion differs. It's a craking, static-y sound, like a poorly tuned radio in some cases. Some videos, especially with certain frequencies of sound as I've said, can be a very heavily distorted.

I was completely fine, with perfect audio all around before accepting the update. I didn't place Adobe Flash as the cause for a while, but after eliminting so many other causes, Adobe Flash is what I feel is the problem. Every other source of audio on my computer still plays perfectly(iTunes, MP3, MP4, etc), it's only youtube. I also tried other video sites such as Vimeo which I believed to run with flash as well and really didn't notice the distortion, but also I can't find a perfect video comparison, so I really can't be sure and don't want to rule them out. Youtube is the only one I absolutely can tell is affected, badly. I checked my firefox Plugins and the Shockwave plugin from Flash is indeed enabled. Also, it happens regardless of whether I watch a youtube video with Firefox or IE. And a final note, I am the admin of this computer, and the only user.

I run Windows 7 64bit

I use Firefox as my main web browser.

I have the lastest Adobe Flash update (11.2.202.228).

I use a Toshiba M645-S4070 laptop.

Intel i5 Processor

4gb ram

Realtek High Definition (I believe this is the soundcard)

I've been looking through threads both here, on microsoft help, and through google search in general trying to solve this and nothing has worked.

I tried uninstalling and re-installing, both with and without full computer reboots between the instalations/unistalations, updating my sound card drivers, checking and disabling my firewall when installing, installing offline, checking to make sure audio enhancement was off (right click on youtube video > settings).

I'm really at loss, and it can be painful to use youtube now as things stand. Also, if I need to post more of my computer's information please say so, since I'm not very knowlagable how to get more specs than what I posted.

Thanks for the advice, I tried the settings and that didn't help, but using youtube with HTML5 did help the videos that could use it. Most partnered videos or with commercial music still are affected since HTML5 doesn't work on videos that run ads, but it is indeed better than nothing.

I had the same bug with bad sound, especially on bass-heavy sound bits, but I found a work arround

Go to Start -> Control panel -> Flash Player -> Advanced

I deleted all "Site Data and Settings"

Sound is back to normal now.

I hope it helps!

Wow I'm shocked, that's all it took to fix it! I think I saw that suggestion on another issue similar to mine, but didn't try it because I wasn't sure exactly what that action would delete, but I just decided to go ahead with it after your post and it actually worked. Thank you, and I hope this thread will stand for anyone else that goes looking for an answer to this issue if they have it as well.

just to add to my post, that this sound popping/crackling issue is MOST noticable while using another flash enabled application or a 3D game like Half-Life2, but I still get sound drops just by moving the mouse and hovering over a tool tip or something that causes a popup. It's as if the video card and the CPU are fighting over which takes priority, the flash audio stream or the screen render. Still hoping for a fix, because deleting the site data and settings did not fix this issue for me.

update - installing flash build 10.3.183.18 solved audio playback stutter/high latency for me. I can duplicate this reliably, after uninstalling and reinstalling each version several times on a freshly formated system. Visual performance is slower on 10.3 but my issue was strictly sound playback via youtube, which 11.2 and the 11.3 beta were the direct cause. Updated bug report. Hope that helps you guys out a bit. Good luck all

Immediately after upgrading to Adobe’s Flash player 11.3.300.257 on 6/18/2012 streaming audio from YouTube and Pandora experienced extreme crackling sound whenever I launched another memory intensive application in my case it was an online backgammon game. I could also re-create the “crackling” just by launching Windows task manager and dragging the task manager screen around my desktop. Prior to the upgrade I never had any audio issues. My PC is quite old by today’s standards but wanted to post as I did find a simple (Adobe) solution which ultimately resolved my crackling issue. I’ll get to that in just a moment.

My PC system configuration is as follows:

Windows XP Professional v2002 Service Pack 3

Internet Explorer v8.0.6001.18702

Dell OPTIPLEX GX270

Pentium® 4 CPU 2.40GHz

2.39 HGz, 512 MB of RAM

The solution which worked quite nicely for me was to simply re-install to a prior version of Flash Player (i.e. Flash Player ActiveX Version 11.2.202.235)

In conclusion, unless there’s a bug in the latest and greatest version of Flash Player, I tend to think, that one or more of my computer components are just not beefy enough to handle new Flash Player upgrades. My audio driver is from 2003!

I hope my recent, painful experience and its solution may help some other poor suffering fool like myself!

Since the newest flash player update about a week ago, I too have been having some issues similar to what everyone in this thread is talking about - I am not noticing it on YouTube or other videos as much, it is mostly happening when playing some games where the sounds the game makes as you click the game pieces will vibrate or echo really badly. The games are running slower too and freezing up on me as well. I didn't have these issues before the update.

So I have two questions. The first is related to the first solution: start > control panel > adobe flash > advanced. Once I get to my control panel I do not see where to find Flash...I only have a screen showing the main areas such as maintenance, add or remove programs, etc. If I go to add or remove programs I can find flash in there but there is no "advanced" button to click. I have no idea how to find that area to make that change and see if that solution works for me.

My next question is related to the 2nd solution by Starman01370. I uninstalled adobe flash player with the uninstaller you linked to, however when I go to the file hippo site I do not see any versions prior to the 11.3. I put it in their search field as well and only 11.3 is being offered on there as far as I can see. I suppose I could try to search online for another file sharing site for an earlier Flash version, but I am a tad leery in downloading things from sites I am unfamiliar with.

At first I thought it was a possible issue with my drivers needing updating, but they are as up to date as they can be given the age of this computer (see below for my computer specs). All other programs and software are up to date on my computer. Though the newest version of Firefox is causing additional issues as well but I did that update after the Adobe Flash update and had the problems I described here prior to the FF update.

Their page is a bit deceiving, but the archive links can be found near the

bottom of the page...just scroll down and select the prior version that you

think might work for you.

I hope this helps. Remember to use Adobe's flash player uninstaller first

and not Window's "Add Remove Programs located in the Window's control panel.

Don't ask me why 'cause I don't have an answer other than I read it

somewhere when I was searching for my fix.

I just reviewed one of the adobe archive zip files that I could have used (but didn't). They appear to contain installation setups for a variety of Operating Systems. If you're running XP, then I believe you'd extract (from the zip file) and run a program like:

Thanks, Starman. Your input was most helpful. In applying your recommendations, all went well -- up to the stipulated archived version of Adobe FP. As it turns out, adopting Wildboar's selection of an older version of FP (i.e., 10.3.183.18) was an essential last step. I also should add that your follow-on posting, which included the alternative Adobe Flash Player archives link, was very helpful.

I had no problems with CD/DVD playback or with playback of Windows Media Player or iTunes content.

The specific problems I encountered were with YouTube and other on-line media playback.

While I don't know for sure how widespread this problem might be, or to what degree Adobe's most recent updates might be implicated in these audio problems, I nonetheless hope that Adobe is taking proper notice. ...

Thanks Starman - I am happy to report that by installing v. 10.3, I no longer have any issues (11.2 does not have the most recent security patches so I went with 10.3 which does). Incidently, I mentioned I didn't have any issues with YouTube or other media type video players but soon after I posted that I started to have those stuttering and freezing issues on there as well. I haven't checked yet to see if installing the earlier flash version solved those issues but I assume and hope it will.

By the way, I found the info and link to the 10.3 version via the Firefox forums - it is a known issue where others are having these same video and sound issues after having installed the latest version of both FF and Adobe Flash and both are working to solve the problem...so hopefully it will all be resolved with the next updates.

Yesterday I got an update from Adobe Flash saying it was the newest "fix" for firefox users to alleviate the issues many were reporting. So I upgraded back to 11.3 with the reported updates, however it did not resolve the echoing/stuttering sound issues - still getting that with the 11.3 version. So back to 10.3 again where I had absolutely no sound issues after I downgraded it last week. Sigh.

I appreciate the on-going follow-up and feedback from other folks who, like myself, are plagued (apparently) with sound distortion problems resulting from the downloading of Abobe's most recent Flash Player update.

I should mention that in the case of MelM27 (and in the case of another poster whose name I can't recall just now) the OS environment they operate in (i.e., Firefox) differs from mine, which is MS XP.

I mention this because I'm not certain whether the outcome of my downloading Adobe's latest FP "fix" and then re-downloading version 11.3 into my XP environment will be any more successful it has been for the two Foxfire users.

For me personally, it would be particularly helpful to receive feedback from anyone in this chatroom who is experiencing this problem and who is also a XP user.

I haven't checked this thread since the last time I posted here but I popped back in here to see if there was any new info. I actually tried to update again when I received an update notice from Adobe a week or so, maybe two weeks back - I thought/hoped they made yet another fix to this issue, but nope...still same problems so back to 10.3 I went again.

John Patrick, regarding your post above about using a different OS than those of us who use Firefox....Firefox is the browser I use, but I have the same OS as you. I have MS windows XP 2002 Home Edition SP3. I thought this was an issue just between Firefox and Adobe but I guess others are having similar issues using other browsers too. I am still using v. 13 of Firefox and have not updated to v.14 yet...afraid to do so with all these issues so I am keeping things as they are for the time being.

EDIT TO ADD: I just found another thread that was also talking about this issue and found out v. 11.4 has been released (as of 8/21 I believe) and a few were reporting it solved all issues for them....no more sound or video problems. This is good news! I haven't tried it yet but hoping it really does solve all these issues. I think it was advised to uninstall the older version (with Adobe uninstall tool not your computer's uninstall) and rebooting computer, then install the newest version to be sure no remnants are still on your computer of the older version.

I also have an excellent sound card (Creative Sound Blaster) but just a generic video card because I don't use my computer for advanced gaming or any other advanced video application.

I WAS using the latest version of Google Chrome, which has the latest version of Adobe Flash Player built in. This gave me no choice about which version of Flash Player to use. Even though I uninstalled the self-standing Flash Player from my system, Google Chrome still had Flash Player 11.5.31.2 built-in.

Recently I too began having distorted sound quality while watching YouTube videos. Quality would worsen if I scrolled down on the same page as the video or if I had another tab open where I was scrolling. The audio/video would even play at slower speeds.

I switched to HTML5 on YouTube and the problem was immediately solved. That is, for videos which use HTML5.

However videos that do not use HTML5 and still use Flash Player were still having the same sound quality issues.

I also ran Angry Birds Chrome online (http://chrome.angrybirds.com) on Google Chrome in order to test basic gaming. It had the same buggy sound problems as it had on YouTube.

This told me that the problem lies squarely with the newest build of Adobe Flash Player.

I then installed the newest Firefox 32-bit (while luckily retaining all of my bookmarks from Chrome) and uninstalled Google Chrome. At that point Flash Player was completely uninstalled on my computer.

I then chose to install an older build of Flash Player.

Video and sound quality now work perfectly fine on YouTube with the newest Firefox and the older version of Flash Player on my computer:

Mozilla Firefox 16.0.2

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.183.29

I also ran Angry Birds Chrome online again, this time using Firefox, even though it is supposedly designed for Google Chrome only. It ran perfectly fine on Firefox, without any of the buggy sound problems that it had when I tested it on Chrome.

I do not plan to ever go back to using Google Chrome again. I think it is a poor idea to have Adobe Flash Player built into Google Chrome. These two applications should be separate.

I had a problem with cracking or popping, more blaring than anything after a recent update (this was happening in all browsers and all flash and youtube vids). Resolved by reinstalling 10.3 as suggested. Thanks!

Same for me. But I am not sure yet, if I downgrade or wait for an update.

Sometimes I start to believe in conspiracies. That new grapics drivers that make old graphic chips slower or new flash versions that start to stutter, crackle and crash older systems have the purpose to make us buy new hardware.